Best of the City

The Editors | Photo: Nick Garcia | December 27, 2013

Another year, another reason to look forward. What better way to welcome 2014 than with everything new? Culture, beauty, health, design, food and plenty of style—we’ve scoured the city to bring you the best of what’s next!

Miami City Ballet dancer Sara Esty, here at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, is one of the company’s rising stars.

Dance Princess Miami City Ballet soloist Sara Esty has lived in Miami for nine years, having relocated from Maine with her twin sister Leigh-Ann after high school—when both ballerinas came to join the company—but she’s still adjusting to our shores. “The way of life down here is so different,” she exclaims. Still, if she experienced culture shock, Esty’s handled it like a pro. Even though rehearsing for a mish-mash of various performances keeps the dancer on her toes (quite literally), that suits Esty just fine. “I have the kind of personality that requires me to be focused on something all the time or I get antsy,” she admits. “The more dancing, the better. It keeps life interesting.” This month, she will be deep in rehearsals for the MCB’s world premiere of Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story Suite, one of the season’s most hyped performances, coming to the stage Feb. 14-16. “I’m so excited because we get to sing in that one,” says Esty, who’s the face of MCB’s 2013-2014 marketing campaign and whom many critics have referred to as one of classical dance’s most radiating rising stars. “A little singing, a little dancing—it’s my two favorite worlds colliding.”

Connecting the Dots
Ask Derek Love, Alex Cohen and Ashley Abess why they launched Infraculture, an online calendar of arts-oriented events that’s free to the public and supported by blue-chip member cultural organizations like The Wolfsonian-FIU, New World Symphony and the National YoungArts Foundation (to name but a few), and all three have different responses, but each addresses an individual component of the big picture. Cohen cites an overall embrace of arts and culture over the past few years: “You can see it at events like Pulse at New World Symphony and PAMM’s Graffiti Bike Tours, where people from all over come to experience this movement.” Abess adds, “Miamians recognize that our city is maturing at a rapid pace, and our residents are seeking meaningful, content-driven social experiences.” Those could be anything from a Literary Death Match book series to a lecture on Tapas Through the Eyes of an American Chef, presented by Michelle Bernstein. “Miami is famously multicultural,” adds Love, “so it comes as no surprise that the recent cultural surge is supremely multifaceted.” Consider us subscribed.

Stage Right
The Broadway Across America season continues to give us winners. After standing ovations for Book of Mormon and We Will Rock You comes Once, Feb. 4-9, the stage adaptation of the movie by the same name that won eight Tony Awards in 2012. The plot involves a naive girl and a street musician falling in love in the streets of Dublin, but we’re more intrigued by the premise of the actors in the ensemble playing their own instruments on stage. Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, 305.949.6722

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